Want to be Happy? Give Your Money Away

We all want to be rich, right? If we have a lot of money, so many of the things troubling us—all those terrible things assembling into a dark storm cloud that hovers over us every day—would disappear. Our credit card debt, student loans, mortgages and car loans could be all paid off. We could go to the grocery store and buy the things we want that aren’t written down on our very important shopping lists. We would want for nothing.

And then what? How happy would you be? Happy enough, I’m sure, but could you get any happier? You could, if you gave some of your money away, perhaps to one of these Nobel laureates-approved causes. That’s because we’re happier when we spend on other people, instead of ourselves. Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton explains in the following TED video: